Not Just Bikes / r/fuckcars / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[Chuck McGill]

At this point, I'm not sure. You can look at the and think, "Well I think you're dumb for paying out the nose for some urban shithole and now are griping about how shoddy it is to get around with public transportation and a bicycle, but whatever dude, I'm not going to tell you how to live". Different people put value on different things, especially when those things are on a budget. The size of your house, the quality of your food, the temperature you set the thermostat on, what services you subscribe to. So they might put all their value into real estate and the trendiest, hippest area, while you might live in a less-expensive apartment on the edge of town, but at least you have enough money for a car.

The problem is, the feeling is not mutual. As smug and obnoxious as they are, your garden-variety bugman would be quite happy if they had their little "heckin' walkable neighborhood", but these people will not settle for that. They do not just want their "heckin' walkable neighborhood", they believe that you need to pay "your fair share" for a car and a house with a yard (hence the "reeeee we're subsidizing you" rhetoric); i.e. making it more expensive. They cannot stand for your way of life at any cost.

And if they get their way, who will still have access to the cars, the houses, the meat? The elite, of course! There is no way they're completely unwittingly simping for the WEF.

They go after normal people because they're acceptable targets. It's the same reason their protests involve blocking highways plebs use instead of industrial disruption or going into gated communities. They know they'll get disappeared real fast if they start hitting the rich where they live so they default back to whatever they can trivially chuck their shit at. To their credit I'm sure they would go after the rich's vehicles, but they'll settle for the beater you drive to work. Pick your battles, y'know?

And there's a few of them that legitimately believe if they shit on the working class enough the elite will smile upon them and give them a nice penthouse in their fashionable city core of choice. They're so blithely unaware that no matter who wins, they'll be the first to go. Either the elites will unceremoniously unalive them once they no longer serve a purpose, or they will be gutted alive in the street by the people they fucked over. And they will deserve it.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

I've found a solution for those that are against the "car brains". It's a bicycle that you can get places quickly with little effort. It even fits on buses and trains!

Slight issues with carbon emissions.
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I decided to look at the retard portal and found this gem.
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This isn't from there but should be.
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Hey @Sneeds you can add redditniggers to that list too.

The new Toyota 4Runner is only driven by overlander larpers and yuppies (what ever the modern term to that is)

 

[Daniël de Clercq]

All this talk reminds me of a time I drove through some small town that had a really nice bike path running along the road, separated by some greenery and a guard rail, maybe 8 meters off to the side. It looked like it was the most expensive piece of infrastructure this town had. To get space for it, they pulled back people's front yards, so you had driveways going across the bike road, but the visibility was okay, and you could see if someone was pulling out from afar (I realize that expecting a cyclist to look ahead and act appropriately when they see someone 4 houses ahead try pulling out is not realistic, but I'm not a city planner).

So there was a family in this idyllic cyclist utopia: mom and dad with kids in a child trailer. Can you guess what they were riding on?
Yup, they rode on the road, causing traffic, getting passed by trucks in sub-optimal spots, and smelling the oh-so-terrible exhaust fumes.

I seriously don't know what's going on in their heads when they decide to do that. Were the driveways such a deal breaker that you'd rather risk getting plowed by a truck overtaking you?

 

[quaawaa]

All this talk reminds me of a time I drove through some small town that had a really nice bike path running along the road, separated by some greenery and a guard rail, maybe 8 meters off to the side. It looked like it was the most expensive piece of infrastructure this town had. To get space for it, they pulled back people's front yards, so you had driveways going across the bike road, but the visibility was okay, and you could see if someone was pulling out from afar (I realize that expecting a cyclist to look ahead and act appropriately when they see someone 4 houses ahead try pulling out is not realistic, but I'm not a city planner).

So there was a family in this idyllic cyclist utopia: mom and dad with kids in a child trailer. Can you guess what they were riding on?
Yup, they rode on the road, causing traffic, getting passed by trucks in sub-optimal spots, and smelling the oh-so-terrible exhaust fumes.

I seriously don't know what's going on in their heads when they decide to do that. Were the driveways such a deal breaker that you'd rather risk getting plowed by a truck overtaking you?

This doesn't apply for your example because it involves a family, but the most common reason that I've heard from the lycra crowd is that they hate using the trails because they're often forced to frequently slow down and pass pedestrians and casual bikers.

It sure is annoying to have to constantly pass slower traffic, isn't it...


They're now saying the quiet part out loud:


Someone asks how a city with no vehicles would function. Answer: cargo bikes and police trams:

Venice is the ideal city:


Someone says that they find cars useful for getting around while injured. Response: "I see people using wheelchairs on the train":

They also don't want cars in rural areas:


Source (Archive)

 

[Markass the Worst]

They're now saying the quiet part out loud:

To an extent I don't care because owning a car in a car hostile place like say Portland is dumb anyway. Dense cities and any place in general can choose to ban cars if their citizens want to. Go ahead NYC and SF, you might as well ban cars so we can see how much of a shitshow will result, I don't live in them so I don't care.

That said, enforcing a car ban across all of America without input from residents is tyranny, and putting the threshold at 50,000 people and not excluding rural areas is just plain retarded.

Someone asks how a city with no vehicles would function. Answer: cargo bikes and police trams:

Part of me is curious enough to see just what would happen if a city went completely car free. Because there's really no such modern city in the world that doesn't have cars. Not even in the Netherlands as many urbanists praise. And these debates are dumb because they never acknowledge that fact and never wonder why that might be.

Venice is the ideal city:

People are not going to be fine with building canals throughout their cities and getting around on boat. Besides as noted before Venice (and Europe for that matter) is more car friendly than they think.

Someone says that they find cars useful for getting around while injured. Response: "I see people using wheelchairs on the train":

Funny seeing the disability talking point brought up when an actual disabled person complains about getting around in a wheelchair in the Netherlands. Though I imagine they're all just like NJB and will ignore it.

They also don't want cars in rural areas:

Do they really think a set of train tracks here or there or spatterings of public transit are enough for how big and low density rural areas are? Most often the transit is only to commute to work in the city, how the hell are you going to get around for the rest of your day?

 

[Luigi Cadorna]

Much-maligned CGP Grey released a video today about how airport codes are assigned. At 1:30 he throws a bone to the Holy Land and says the Amsterdam Schiphol airport is "so intermodally epic". It's marked as Filler/Tangent in Sponsorblock which I agree with.

Clip of just that part of the video:
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I wonder if he's trying to claw back goodwill from urbanists, especially Adam Something viewers, who are still hounding him for daring to make the solution to traffic video 6 years ago. It won't work. They didn't back off when told he actually lives in London, rides a bike everywhere, doesn't own a car, and at one point didn't drive for around a decade because he got into a car accident, why would they do it now?

I hadn't watched this video in years but nearly every top comment is a) from a year or less ago and b) "HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF TRAINS?!?!!!!?!". Did Adam Something or one of our other "friends" featured in this thread sick their horde on Grey? It's just bizarre that a six year old video is getting suddenly flooded with this shit.

 

[DavidS877]

Police should use a helicopter to take in suspects.
A helicopter that costs more than the entire fleet of police cars.
A helicopter that uses as much fuel in that one trip as all the cars do in a day.
A helicopter that is almost certainly louder than any of the cars.
A helicopter that can't really land many places in a city at all.

These are the top minds of Reddit...

 

[Markass the Worst]

I hadn't watched this video in years but nearly every top comment is a) from a year or less ago and b) "HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF TRAINS?!?!!!!?!". Did Adam Something or one of our other "friends" featured in this thread sick their horde on Grey? It's just bizarre that a six year old video is getting suddenly flooded with this shit.

Yes, a year ago Adam Something made a video response to Grey.

And in case that wasn't enough, he made a video this year calling out Grey again, seemingly unsatisfied he's been ignored.

This is covered in the OP (though not the newer video, maybe I should update the OP sometime)

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Do they really think a set of train tracks here or there or spatterings of public transit are enough for how big and low density rural areas are? Most often the transit is only to commute to work in the city, how the hell are you going to get around for the rest of your day?

I doubt they even know how rural communities functioned for...hundreds of years. In pre-1950 rural America, you had your farm, you took your goods to "market" (the town) where they would be sold, the train was there to provide transportation to other towns (in a time when many highways were not even paved) or to be transported to other towns. You did not use them for intra-city transportation. Taking goods to the market would require either a car (even pre-1950, yes) or a horse and buggy.

In years before that (say, Medieval Europe), you had a farm (or worked on a farm) and took those goods to your town (without a rail) the same way.

If you go to a small town (doubtful these fucks do), they're laid out very much the same way. The railroad is not used as much for passenger travel because the highways are modernized now and could easily handle truck travel, and unless you're a major crop producer, the rail spur is only used for bulk industrial purposes, usually a feed mill or fertilizer facility. (There's other potential traffic as well, like metal fabrication plants or concrete/gravel facilities but usually feed & fertilizer is your best bet).

People are not going to be fine with building canals throughout their cities and getting around on boat. Besides as noted before Venice (and Europe for that matter) is more car friendly than they think.

I looked up Dubrovnik. It's not a huge city to begin with (just a town, with a little less than 15k people) but the "Old Town" area (medieval area with no cars) is basically a tourist trap--thousands of people visiting but about 1,600 people and a declining number (down from 5000 even in 1991). I would suspect that prices at restaurants and other stores is sky-high, not just from being a tourist trap but the difficult of providing delivery service.

The rest of the town can be described as somewhat cramped, but definitely not car-free (and no rail, either).

Police should use a helicopter to take in suspects.
A helicopter that costs more than the entire fleet of police cars.
A helicopter that uses as much fuel in that one trip as all the cars do in a day.
A helicopter that is almost certainly louder than any of the cars.
A helicopter that can't really land many places in a city at all.

These are the top minds of Reddit...

The helicopter is the least silly concept and the idea that they can use cargo bicycles to arrest suspects? What, are they gonna toss someone in the back of a cargo bicycle? (If you look at the pictures in Google, an adult would have a very hard time riding in one). And that's not even considering that police cars have a physical barrier to prevent the suspect from attacking the people up front.

 

[quaawaa]

I looked up Dubrovnik. It's not a huge city to begin with (just a town, with a little less than 15k people) but the "Old Town" area (medieval area with no cars) is basically a tourist trap--thousands of people visiting but about 1,600 people and a declining number (down from 5000 even in 1991). I would suspect that prices at restaurants and other stores is sky-high, not just from being a tourist trap but the difficult of providing delivery service.

And guess what is immediately outside of the medieval town:

Car parking and boat parking.

 

[Colonel Gaddafi]

Venice traffic and pollution free? Oh, che montagna di cazzate. There’s a major highway (SR11) that connects the part of the city where people actually live to the Old Town, where you’re then required to park and get a water taxi. When you read about Venice being ‘car free’ it’s only in relation to the old part of the city, which isn’t that big as compared to its mainland sprawl. Also the water taxis and boats the locals use? Yeah, they’re not exactly eco friendly either. That being said, very few people actually live in this pedestrian paradise, the metro area has around 600,000, but less than 50,000 live in the old part of the city. It’s expensive, full of tourists, and inconvenient. I swear these people have never left their basement.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

I hadn't watched this video in years but nearly every top comment is a) from a year or less ago and b) "HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF TRAINS?!?!!!!?!". Did Adam Something or one of our other "friends" featured in this thread sick their horde on Grey? It's just bizarre that a six year old video is getting suddenly flooded with this shit.

to be fair, it wasnt that great of a take

 

[Pedophobe]

Do you include Donoteat01 with this lot?

 

[MS Paint Gigachad]

Venice traffic and pollution free? Oh, che montagna di cazzate. There’s a major highway (SR11) that connects the part of the city where people actually live to the Old Town, where you’re then required to park and get a water taxi. When you read about Venice being ‘car free’ it’s only in relation to the old part of the city, which isn’t that big as compared to its mainland sprawl. Also the water taxis and boats the locals use? Yeah, they’re not exactly eco friendly either. That being said, very few people actually live in this pedestrian paradise, the metro area has around 600,000, but less than 50,000 live in the old part of the city. It’s expensive, full of tourists, and inconvenient. I swear these people have never left their basement.

It'd be funny if they eveentually literally made it italian disneyland - nothing but attractions and shopping, maybe a hotel, bunch of airbnbs, and nothing a local would touch

So what you're saying is... I was late. No big surprise.

 

[John Freeman]

If they weren’t so smug about their righteousness I’d be half inclined to hear them out

 

[Markass the Worst]

to be fair, it wasnt that great of a take

Yeah, I don't like the lack of freedom of self driving cars. But they get mad at him for daring to improve cars instead of just abolishing them entirely. And it's autistic as fuck to brigade his video over it.

Do you include Donoteat01 with this lot?

Probably, that channel seems to have urbanist videos though seems inactive now. He also started the Well There's Your Problem Podcast which while not being entirely about urbanism seems to have taken on an urbanist slant (they had NJB on once to shit on pedestrian bridges which are apparently considered car infrastructure). I haven't listened to it but apparently it's just three guys fucking around for a couple hours in Discord VC with barely any structure or direction about the engineering disaster of a given episode and almost no editing to make it watchable. Any criticism of this format is dismissed with "lol fuck you go watch something else" and flaunting of Patreon numbers which tells you how highly they think of themselves.

One of the guys is a she/her with the most masculine troon voice in existence so of course there's a disturbing amount of tranny simping going in the comments:

source (can't archive YT comments)

I was considering including WTYPP in the OP but cut it at the last minute because at least they don't spend every waking second complaining about cars.

 

[quaawaa]

/r/fuckcars accidentally made a meme showing that buses that aren't filled up take up a lot of space:


Source (Archive)
This scientific graphic shows that in order to use road space in the most efficient manner, single bugmen and buses should be banned from the roads. Only SUV-owning families with at least four children should be allowed on the road.

I know that this is a joke, but I hate how in the serious versions of this picture they use the crush loads for transit but assume only a single person per car. They also ignore headways. It's too much to ask for an urbanist to use the actual numbers of people transported instead of just making stuff up.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

/r/fuckcars accidentally made a meme showing that buses that aren't filled up take up a lot of space:
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Source (Archive)
This scientific graphic shows that in order to use road space in the most efficient manner, single bugmen and buses should be banned from the roads. Only SUV-owning families with at least four children should be allowed on the road.

I know that this is a joke, but I hate how in the serious versions of this picture they use the crush loads for transit but assume only a single person per car. They also ignore headways. It's too much to ask for an urbanist to use the actual numbers of people transported instead of just making stuff up.

The "serious" versions always make the critical error of assuming that everyone is going to the same place. If there's some sort of park and ride with a destination (like a zoo) then it makes sense but for most routes it does not. If you go driving, the people around you will constantly change, turn off and on, etc., the only exception is if you're going down a highway and that will disappear the second they reach their city destination. On road trips, going down the numbered highways, 21, 6, 290, 35, I'm often near the same vehicles for miles. But once I actually get off the highway and go other places, they're gone.

I think a large part of the "urban planner" mindset--besides the outright fabrications and propaganda...is that they only see numbers and apply them to the real world. Creating high numbers in mass transit looks great on paper, but it doesn't work in reality unless you think slave ships were the pinnacle of human transportation efficiency.

 

[Meriasek]

Venice being an example of a car-free city, lol. The lagoon is car-free, yes. It's also free of anything else that isn't tourist-oriented, and hilariously inaccessible for anyone not particularly well on their feet. Bridges and stairs everywhere. Bikes are not an option.
Also, it's great to visit for a few days, but it's not a great place to live. It's cramped af, narrow, dark alleys are basically all there is. The boats are pretty expensive, but on the lagoon you don't really need them that often.
It can work that way because it's all very tiny and very cramped. On land, without the restrictions of the lagoon? Venice is just another Italian city with the regular amount of roads and cars (and the regular amount of terrible Italian drivers, although at least the northerners are better than the southerners).
At least the canals don't smell anymore.

 

[JJLiautaud]

The Practical Engineer "redeems" himself:

I always thought the criticism of him was dumb he often breaks down topics like this to a series of videos and discusses each topic in turn.